Die
by BadaBingxBadaBoom
Summary: Wet tears slide down her cheeks and roll off the curve of her lips, disappointment saturating her bones. She’s too late, and she’s dead, and there’s nothing she can do because it’s over and she was too late.


**Again, writer's block so I'm trying to satisfy you with some old stuff that's just sitting in my folders, waiting for it's chance to shine and be published.**

**Not entirely sure about where this particular idea came from, but my morbid mind found it, and my obeying (most of the time :P) fingers recorded it.**

**So, here it is. **

**Disclaimer: I can't take legal action to own this because I'm just a kid and, a broke kid at that. So. It's JP's.**

**Kisses,**

**{--Inky--}**

* * *

People like Maximum Ride don't die.

They can't.

They're too strong, too stubborn, too feisty to just die, like any old person.

They fight, right up to the very end, that moment when you know that there is no backdoor to escape through. That moment where everything slows down, and you remember why you're fighting so hard in the first place. To make a difference. To change the evils, or to die trying.

People like Maximum Ride are hard to come by. They hide in the shadows, blending and waiting for their moment, then stepping out to instill hope when everyone else has given up.

But when Maximum Ride does step into the light, she shines like a million diamonds, stunning and sparkling and dazzling.

Only a fool would try to hold her down.

She's like a flame: uncontainable, dangerous, bright.

Maximum Ride can't die.

She just can't.

Because if she does, so will the rest of the world.

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Death is easy. Death is letting go, uncurling your fingers from those things you've clung to for so long. Death is simplicity, easing your worries and calming your fears so that you can close your eyes and drift away.

Death is boring.

The blackness is too solid. There is nothing, nothing but the images floating across her eyelids, into her subconscious. The kids she has spent her entire life and _being_ protecting, the only family she's ever known. The people who taught her what it is like to love. The man who reminded her that blood doesn't always make a father. The life she's known, the craziness that most wouldn't stand. Her life. They are slipping away, slowly enough that she can watch every excruciating moment, but fast enough that she would have to fight to catch up. She struggles against the instinct to give chase.

_You're dead,_ she reminds herself. _You shouldn't have to worry anymore. You're dead._

She tries comforting herself, focusing on her faith in him to look after them because she had asked him to. He will do it, she is sure. It's her dying wish, right? He will respect that. She wonders if he will remember about the tradition of reading a bedtime story, and where they hid the chlorine, and that the Advil was actually in a Motrin bottle in the bathroom. She wonders if he would miss her. All her quirks, her comments. Will he still go out to the old abandoned tree house like they used to, to watch the sun rise over the Colorado Mountains? She wishes she could go with him, just to feel the wind in her face again, to see the spattering of yellows and pinks and reds spread across the horizon.

But she can't. She is dead. Or at least she will be, soon.

The pain in her side is fading away to a dull ache, barely noticeable but still there. She tries not to focus too hard on it, instead letting her mind wander. A very serious thought plagues her consciousness suddenly.

What if he doesn't know? What if he doesn't know how to take care of them? How will they survive without her?

One answer: they won't.

Right then and there she decides that she isn't ready to die just yet. There are people out there who need her, who are counting on her. And she has to get back to them _now._

Panicked, she struggles furiously against the murky blanket of dark, using all of her strength to push against it.

But it pushes back, overwhelming her. The black covers her torso, her arms, her legs, and she barely hears her own shrieks as it surges upwards towards her face.

The light fades from her vision, receding back until she can barely make it out anymore. She reaches desperately for it, crying silently and begging for it. Her fingers brush the warmth, but she falls back. It's leaving, and her breath becomes ragged, erratic, panicked.

_No._ She feels her entire being pulling at it, tugging painfully. But now she can reach it again, and her fingers latch into it. It burns the pads of her fingertips, and she winces but holds tighter. If she comes out of this alive, but with no fingerprints, she doesn't care. It's the _alive _part that matters.

_This is for them; I'm coming back for them,_ she repeats to herself, refusing to admit that she's struggling because she's afraid to die. Fifteen years isn't enough for her. She knows that now.

The warm light touches her face, and her muscles in her lips ache to smile, but she doesn't. She can't see them. She expected to see them, waiting for her on the other side of the light, but they're not there. They aren't there.

_They aren't' _there.

Wet tears slide down her cheeks and roll off the curve of her lips, disappointment saturating her bones. She's too late, and she's dead, and there's nothing she can do because it's over and she was too late.

"Max." The tears come even harder, more steadily. She can actually hear his voice, the Other Side taunting her with things she can't have anymore.

"Max, don't die. Please don't die." Her baby, she's upset and crying. She doesn't realize, but her hand reaches out to wrap around the little girl's shaking fingers, squeezing gently.

Someone screams, and several sounds of crying echo through to her, and she manages to tug her eyelids open.

Green. And brown. The canopy of leaves overhead, just like a forest. Five grinning, dirty, tear-streaked faces, each one more familiar and more cherished than her own.

She lets that smile through.

_So much for being dead_, she laughs inside.

"Someone grab me a Tylenol, my head feels like I just got squished by a sumo wrestler."

* * *

**There it is.**

**The end.**


End file.
